Getting the gang back together

Published
12:00 am CDT, Thursday, June 19, 2014

BETHALTO — The garage at Mike Schlemer’s Bethalto home is typically filled with various collectables, tables and chairs. In recent days, however, the garage was also filled with howls of laughter and decades’ worth of memories.

It has been 44 years since Schlemer, Wayne Sot, Doyle Dow and Larry Thrash, four members of the U.S. Army’s 13th Battalion that served in the Vietnam War, have all been together. But this time they are not sharing a tent in the sweltering Vietnam heat. This time, they’re sharing memories of a time that crafted a lifelong bond.

Over the years a couple of the guys have gotten together at different points, but they all finally got the opportunity to reconnect in Bethalto, a central location for these veterans who are spread all over the country. Schlemer still lives in Bethalto while Sot is in Ohio, Dow lives in Utah and Thrash lives in Kansas.

Finding each other was no simple task, either. A few years ago, Schlemer helped take the pivotal steps to organizing a reunion with his former bunkmates. He began making calls to try to locate his old friends. From there, Dow and Sot began to help, but nobody could get a hold of Thrash.

“I had like 900 numbers for Thrash, all of them disconnected,” Schlemer said.

Finally, he got a reply from Thrash’s previous place of work, but the current employee had never heard of him.

“You’re all I’ve got, would you just ask around?” Schlemer asked of the employee.

Two days later, Schlemer got a call. It was Thrash.

“I could have dropped the phone,” Schlemer said of his surprise to hear from his old friend.

Several more years passed, and finally the group organized their first full meeting in over four decades.

For three days these four veterans spent time howling about old times and talking about the year they spent in Vietnam, for better and for worse. They talked about times when they would go down to the village and get their warm $2 beers that were allotted to them. They talked about how difficult it was to come back to America and start over.

They talked about a fellow solider who reminded them all of Rambo, the famous Sylvester Stallone character, and the pranks he would pull on them. Though they can laugh about it now, they recall that it was not nearly as funny 44 years ago.

However, none of that stopped them from reliving that year of their life. Despite the fact that things have changed over the years, they all fall back into routine when they get together.

“It’s life 44 years ago, they’re the same guys,” Sot said. “They’re not strangers after 44 years.”

Pictures from their time in Vietnam flooded the table they sat around. Some of them were serious; most of them were pictures of themselves trying to have fun any way they could.

“I don’t know how we made it,” Thrash said. “We were all kids.”

Coming from different walks of life was not an issue for the four men in Vietnam, and it remains a non-issue for them today. Despite the fact that all four were from the Midwest, they all experienced different things. Thrash was from Chicago and remembers that his mom never let him stay at anyone’s house overnight. They did not know each others’ backgrounds before 1969, but they all shared one thing in common.

“We all wore green, and that was it,” Thrash said.

And although it took them 44 years to arrange the first get-together, the men vowed to make a better effort to reconnect again in the future. Even if the meeting is outside of his hometown, Schlemer said he’ll find a way there to share more photos, laughs and memories.

“If they want to go to Ethopia,” Schlemer said,” I’ll meet them there.”